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Monthly Archives: December 2004

An Interview with Drew from Antistatic What made you start the band?I went to school with Basin, and we’d always jammed together for fun invarious little school bands and such. We’ve always wanted to do the bandthing since we were kids, so when Brody and Basin met at TAFE, we all juststarted jamming. Jamming turned into writing, turned into gigging, it alljust kind of happened without us even thinking about it.

A few months ago you released your first ep. How was the recording process?Extremely quick! We basically put the ep down over four days with a few days for vocals. It came down to doing as much as we could with limitedfinances, and in that regard, considering the circumstances, we’re pretty happy with the finished product. It was heaps of fun especially working with Jarrad Hearman, who is a good mate of ours now, but i mean it’s hard work. You gotta get things perfect, and we’re hard as fuck on ourselves.

You also launched the cd at the amplifier. How was that night?Massive! The other bands were awesome, and the crowd was just fantastic that night. Huge props to everyone who came down. To see that many people there to celebrate the release of the disc made us very happy.

What are you planning now you’ve released the cd?Writing way better songs, touring the rest of the country extensively and hopefully beginning work on a full length album towards the end of next year. A lot of hard work, but itll be an absolute shitload of fun.

What are the other highlights of the time you’ve been playing in antistatic?Playing BDO 2004 was fucking unbelievable. It’s probably one of threetimes we’ve ever played that we were all happy with. Our supports with Sunk Loto and The Butterfly Effect were fantastic experiences, we totally look up to those dudes so that sort of thing is very exciting for us.

What bands are you listening to at the moment?Hmmmm. Sarah Blasko, U2, Meshuggah, Glassjaw and Sparta are all pretty awesome. And Deftones, 36 Crazyfists and Sevendust. Too many.

What bands do you play with in the Perth scene?A lot of the time now we play shows with the heavy-alternative sort ofacts like Head Filled Attraction, Lockdown, SleeperX and Heavy Weight Champ. It’s awesome to playing with the newer bands coming through likeHope Here Gone and Thoughts Ignite. Those guys are wicked and show heaps of promise.

Other than the bands you play with, are there local bands that you like of different genres?We dig Tragic Delicate, they’re great. K are an amazing group too.

A special focus on new bands who are new to the scene. The idea is to pick one band for each month and they will be interviewed. If your band is new to the scene and are interested in being part of this email leoabbs@gmail.com .

Please include the following details of your band:

A biography

Photo

Links to any recordings you have online

Your website address

Perth Sounds is particularly looking for bands that have been gigging for less than a year.

You are probably best known for your being the guitarist in heathcliffe,though you also have been involved with rockus zine for a number of years.What is rockus and why did you start rockus?

Rockus is an online magazine dedicated to promoting the Australian music scene. It’sthe only such zine of its kind in WA, so I’m pretty proud of that and also that it’s wellrespected right around the country.

It’s actually a pretty boring story, the way it started. I was meant to be studying for an exam or some sort of assessment in year 11 and I got bored of doing it and decided I’d start an online zine instead. Anyway, 6 hours later and it was online.

Things were becoming a bit stale but Rockus was re-launched last Friday (3rd of December) and the site is now doing (and looking) better than ever, I’m more motivated then ever to really make it the go-to Australian zine (as are the members of the crew involved), and it has become a lot more beneficial for promoting the scene in its entirity.

How long have you been doing rockus?

Rockus has been around since March 2000, so almost five years now, which ispretty much a quarter of my life.

Do you do much promotions with rockus?

Yeah, mostly through putting on shows presented by Rockus – the fourth such show will beheld in January next year featuring a killer lineup of local talent (Snowman, The Volcanics,11th He Reaches London, Kill Devil Hills, Schvendes) so that’s definitely one to look out for.

I’m also looking to get shows promoted by the zine happening in other states in Australiafrom next year too. Word of mouth is also a powerful, powerful thing.

Are there any ambitions on what you are going to do with rockus in the future?Taking things one step at a time for now, just getting back into the swing of things, but maybe one day it’s popularity will be such that I can actually do this thing for a living. That’d be the ultimate I’d say.

Anything that involves music is the best job of all.

Back to the music side of things – you were as i said before a member of Heathcliffe which recently broke up. How did you come to be in heathcliffe?

As horribly cliched as this is going to sound, I rediscovered my love of playingguitar when my first love broke my heart. Oh, how much fun are relationships!

Joni (vocalist) and I became best mates while I was suffering from extremesadness and I guess depression for a good 8 months back in 2001, and we’dspend the days skipping uni, eating pasta or crap fast food (whatever didn’t costtoo much), getting stoned and writing tunes. Writing music helped fill the void.

After a couple of public acoustic performances, we decided the band thing wasthe way to go and we found the other 3 guys in a pub somewhere… probably.

The rest is history.You were pretty full on with the band and then suddenly it broke up. Arethere are any regrets about it ending after only one ep?

I’m pretty happy with ending when we did. It was becoming a struggle just tokeep it together for a few shows after the launch. I’m happy that there’s an EPto show for it, and that we didn’t just die with nothing as a record because, quitefrankly, my memory is so fucking shit that in a few years I probably wouldn’teven remember I was in the band unless I had the CD.

Plus, it’s just a fucking good sounding recording. Bondy (Steve Bond, producer) is a genius. I’d love to work with that guy again sometime.

You also played in Ikey Mo for a while how did that come about?The first bunch of guys who were in Ikey Mo went their seperate ways and ChrisFuller wanted to get the band back together. I met the guy properly for the firsttime at an APRA Christmas party in December last year and he basically askedif I’d be keen on a jam, as he’d seen one or two Heathcliffe performances and dugthe guitar style.

Being an Anodyne 500 fan and digging his approach to emotive poprock songwriting (or high octane pop as they called it) convinced me to say ‘yes’,although Ikey died completely in September this year, which is a shame, but hey,least it was fun for awhile.

So post heathcliffe and ikey, what are you doing? Any new projects starting up? Are there any other aspects of the local scene you’ve been involved with?

I’ve actually had a pretty terrible year so currently just trying to get some motivationback. I’m still keen on being involved with this whole music thing, so I’m promotingsome gigs at the moment.

It’s nice to organise shows with your favourite bands and not have to lug gear around for once… but, having said that, I feel like I need to be in a band to feel truly complete, so something will happen soon I’m sure.

I’ve been writing a bit lately… trauma always brings out the best ideas from me.

Little Birdy came out of nowhere last year receiving public attention and were given a major label contract with only a handful of live shows under their belt. While the little Birdy name was new the experience of the band wasn’t with various members having gigged around town for years in bands like Fourth Floor Collapse (Barney), The Plastic Scene (Katy) and guitarist Simon, he gigged with everyone it seems – The Mission Blue, Halogen and Freud’s Pillow.

A year and a half after being signed, with two ep’s released and lots of touring – both national and international under their belt, they have released their debut album, ‘Big Big Love’.

While the band quickly gained popularity around the country, back home it just meant too many people got the tall poppy syndroome disease and asked ‘why them?’ The questions are answered on this cd. It’s a cracker.

When you hear Katy Steele sing it’s quite amazing that she has only just began her twenties. It’s her unique vocals that lead this band. She’s backed up well by the band including the use of piano/keyboards on the recrding, which have reduplicated live by the adding of a session member.

Highlights of this album include ‘Beautiful to me’ (i wonder how many people sing that to their lovers now?), Tonnight’s the night and Message to God. Add to this their first ‘hit’ Relapse is on there – but re-recorded and so is Andy Warhol from the first ep.

A few listens later and you begin to ponder that love is a big thing indeed.

When josivac’s guitarist Simon went overseas for six months, it meant the band was on hold. Now that he’s back in town, tonight they were ready to resume gigging.

Craig Harman opened proceedings. Known around town to the guy who does the websites for bands (jebediah, showbag, jebediah etc) he’s slowly getting a reputation as a decent muso. He’s been around the scene for 7 years first playing in Helix and then Petrolfish, and mostly recently he’s been the frontman for The Make Out Club.

He’s come along way from the early days of Helix, who got many a slagging for their strong jebediah influences – but tonight he was on his lonesome and the songs sounded like he’s just been writing and writing, playing guitar and singing and the hard work pays off. A nice way to start the evening.

My excuse for not seeing much of the wah trees was… that the swan basement now has a beer garden. I caught the end of their set and it seemed funkier than I recall previously. What the hell was Vocalist Sawyer doing on keyboard during the 2nd last song?

A loyal crowd were there to welcome the josivac guys back. It was a mellow start minus the rhythm section…it wasn’t until later in the set they hit their stride. This band is best when they are more uptempo and they a’rocking – pounding drums, and the group really getting into it and rocking out more than an acoustic band should. Hopefully their forthcoming album captures the energy they display on stage at their best.

What is a feature of this band is the dual vocalists Jodie and Novac providing beautiful harmonies. They work together well sharing the vocals and also iin taking turns to do lead. With the introduction of keys, harmonica and 2nd guitar to various parts of the set it is opening ways for the band to tread different ground, leaving them at times sounding more pop/rock rather than folk. I just wish they’d set up quicker.

The ended the set with ‘too cold’ the title track from their ep of the same and then it was the traditional set closer, who’s name i’m not sure – the bluesy one ‘get up, get up get off my floor…. ‘I don’t want to see you round anymore’is how it goes…

Though we do want to see the band around, it’s been too long between shows.